![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/mcdonald-mps.jpg\")
West McDonald, Print Audit<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cSBB is happening,\u201d McDonald exclaimed, pointing to research that indicated 8 percent of customers under MPS contracts self-reported that they were paying under SBB already. He also noted that for first-time MPS customers, 11 percent were paying on a seat basis as opposed to CPP.<\/p>\n
Print Audit, in tandem with CIG released an online resource, The Essential Guide to Seat Based Billing and Managed Print, which explores the essential considerations for considering a SBB program. McDonald said the guide has reaped more than 700 unique dealer downloads, with total downloads numbering in the thousands.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone\u2019s paying attention,\u201d McDonald noted.<\/p>\n
As an illustration, McDonald pointed to the many disruptive technologies that marked the 10-year period between 2006 and 2016, including the displacement of offerings such as the Blackberry (by iPhones and Androids), video rental stores (Netflix) and MySpace (Facebook). \u201c[Yet] in 2016, we still see [CPP billing],\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s funny that we\u2019re seeing all this disruption in the world, yet we work in the one industry that will never change, that isn\u2019t as susceptible to changing market conditions and changing buyer habits. But now we have SBB contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2016, Print Audit created a 29-dealer partner panel called the SBB Council to help take on (and work through) the complexities of SBB. That helped pave the foundation for SBBcertified.com, an accreditation certification program for MPS providers to validate an understanding of the SBB model to customers and prospects.<\/p>\n
SBB is a work in progress that is clearly moving forward. It\u2019s also not ideal for every vertical market, especially those like K-12 (education), which has seasonal variability and spikes of usage, with virtually no usage during the summer months.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Luke-Goldberg.jpg\")
Luke Goldberg, Clover Imaging Group<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cWe are not saying SBB replaces CPP,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cWe\u2019re saying it\u2019s another vehicle to deliver the service of print. It has a lot of viability in businesses that are used to being billed this way, for services like security, IT services. For those guys, it may be more palatable and make a lot more sense. Another benefit is the ability to layer services, whether that service is rules-based printing, or security or workflow, BPO, etc. You can\u2019t layer services with a page; it\u2019s static. These are a lot of reasons were bullish on this and lot of reasons we decided to take the plunge and offer our dealers this type of a turnkey, no-risk solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDonald and Goldberg are spreading the word of SBB through the SBB Road Shows, a partnership that includes Print Audit, CIG, GreatAmerica Financial Services, Supplies Network, and Office Document Consulting, in tandem with the Business Technology Association (BTA). The five-hour presentations debuted June 6 in Kansas City, MO, with shows slated for Aug. 15 in Las Vegas and Sept. 12 in Philadelphia. The shows promise a comprehensive grounding in the art of SBB.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Brisco-HeadShot-300x249.jpg\")
Greg Brisco, Dove Print Solutions<\/p><\/div>\n
The ECS presentation included a Q&A with an SBB adopter, Greg Brisco, a regional manager from Dove Print Solutions of Florence, SC. Ironically, what initially prompted Dove Print Solutions to go down the SBB path was the loss of a key account to another dealer that provided a seat-based offering.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, I take that personally, like a slap in the face,\u201d Brisco remarked. \u201cThat validated it, made it real that there are dealers out there proposing seat-based offerings. It\u2019s not going to be for every customer or every single situation, but I\u2019d rather arm myself with the ability to provide the software. I\u2019d rather have it and not need it rather than need it and not have it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By collecting all of the customers\u2019 user data through a detailed assessment that incorporates trailing performance, Dove Print Solutions can build a seat price specific to the user. \u201cOnce I figure out how much it\u2019s going to cost me to manage that customer, I can figure out where can I have the cuts; can I reduce the volume, can I reallocate some of those pages to a more cost effective device?\u201d Brisco noted. \u201cOnce you go through the assessment and get that data, it allows you to structure it how you need to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added McDonald: \u201cWhen we find workflow savings, under a seat program, we\u2019re not giving them all back to the customer. We\u2019re keeping some of that. When we construct a seat-based deal, you can see reductions in revenue of 15-20 percent, but upticks in the total gross profit in the account, anywhere from 6-9 percent. We\u2019re not, as dealers, giving it all back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brisco said the ideal candidate for SBB is one that can take advantage of multiple services in instances where the customer is being billed not only for managed print but other offerings that entail different billing methods. \u201cYou have some you\u2019re billing for seat, billing for page, some you\u2019re billing transactional\u2014to make that process easier for you and the customer, that would be ideal. If you would look to acquire them as a customer, whether as cost per click or transactional, nothing changes for seat-based billing. You can have 10 employees or 10,000 employees. There\u2019s no bad situation with SBB.\u201d<\/p>\n
Print Audit and CIG partnered to bring the market\u2019s first wholesale SBB (Seat Based Billing) or CPS (Cost Per Seat) program for managed print to the industry. As an addition to CIG\u2019s Axess Managed Print Services suite, the program enables managed print providers to deliver cost savings through business process optimization) for customers while improving and protecting total dealer profits.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has been said that a revolution begins with one angry man. In the case of seat-based billing (SBB), two gentlemen are at the lead of an uprising to redefine the decades-old cost-per-page (CPP) billing platform for managed print services. And these men are not alone. In layman\u2019s terms, SBB uses a monthly flat fee per seat for printing rights under a managed print service contract rather than calculating a cost per page. The \u201cseat\u201d incorporates consumables, parts, support and software, with the opportunity to layer in other services. The seat platform enables customers to enjoy a fixed budget (sans overage hassles and page count validations) with cost savings through workflow improvements, while the MPS providers can provide a more comprehensive offering while avoiding the price commoditization inherent with CPP in an age of declining page volume. Two of the \u201cfounding fathers\u201d of the SBB movement (and there are others) include West McDonald, vice president of business development for Print Audit, and Luke Goldberg, executive vice president, sales and marketing for Clover Imaging Group (CIG). In May, the pair provided a state of the SBB presentation during the Executive Connection Summit in Scottsdale, AZ, which acted as a follow-up to SBB\u2019s coming-out party at ECS 2016 only 15 months earlier. \u201cSBB is happening,\u201d McDonald exclaimed, pointing to research that indicated 8 percent of customers under MPS contracts self-reported that they were paying under SBB already. He also noted that for first-time MPS customers, 11 percent were paying on a seat basis as opposed to CPP. Print Audit, in tandem with CIG released an online resource, The Essential Guide to Seat Based Billing and Managed Print, which explores the essential considerations for considering a SBB program. McDonald said the guide has reaped more than 700 unique dealer downloads, with total downloads numbering in the thousands. \u201cSomeone\u2019s paying attention,\u201d McDonald noted. As an illustration, McDonald pointed to the many disruptive technologies that marked the 10-year period between 2006 and 2016, including the displacement of offerings such as the Blackberry (by iPhones and Androids), video rental stores (Netflix) and MySpace (Facebook). \u201c[Yet] in 2016, we still see [CPP billing],\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s funny that we\u2019re seeing all this disruption in the world, yet we work in the one industry that will never change, that isn\u2019t as susceptible to changing market conditions and changing buyer habits. But now we have SBB contracts.\u201d In 2016, Print Audit created a 29-dealer partner panel called the SBB Council to help take on (and work through) the complexities of SBB. That helped pave the foundation for SBBcertified.com, an accreditation certification program for MPS providers to validate an understanding of the SBB model to customers and prospects. SBB is a work in progress that is clearly moving forward. It\u2019s also not ideal for every vertical market, especially those like K-12 (education), which has seasonal variability and spikes of usage, with virtually no usage during the summer months. \u201cWe are not saying SBB replaces CPP,\u201d Goldberg said. \u201cWe\u2019re saying it\u2019s another vehicle to deliver the service of print. It has a lot of viability in businesses that are used to being billed this way, for services like security, IT services. For those guys, it may be more palatable and make a lot more sense. Another benefit is the ability to layer services, whether that service is rules-based printing, or security or workflow, BPO, etc. You can\u2019t layer services with a page; it\u2019s static. These are a lot of reasons were bullish on this and lot of reasons we decided to take the plunge and offer our dealers this type of a turnkey, no-risk solution.\u201d McDonald and Goldberg are spreading the word of SBB through the SBB Road Shows, a partnership that includes Print Audit, CIG, GreatAmerica Financial Services, Supplies Network, and Office Document Consulting, in tandem with the Business Technology Association (BTA). The five-hour presentations debuted June 6 in Kansas City, MO, with shows slated for Aug. 15 in Las Vegas and Sept. 12 in Philadelphia. The shows promise a comprehensive grounding in the art of SBB. The ECS presentation included a Q&A with an SBB adopter, Greg Brisco, a regional manager from Dove Print Solutions of Florence, SC. Ironically, what initially prompted Dove Print Solutions to go down the SBB path was the loss of a key account to another dealer that provided a seat-based offering. \u201cFor me, I take that personally, like a slap in the face,\u201d Brisco remarked. \u201cThat validated it, made it real that there are dealers out there proposing seat-based offerings. It\u2019s not going to be for every customer or every single situation, but I\u2019d rather arm myself with the ability to provide the software. I\u2019d rather have it and not need it rather than need it and not have it.\u201d By collecting all of the customers\u2019 user data through a detailed assessment that incorporates trailing performance, Dove Print Solutions can build a seat price specific to the user. \u201cOnce I figure out how much it\u2019s going to cost me to manage that customer, I can figure out where can I have the cuts; can I reduce the volume, can I reallocate some of those pages to a more cost effective device?\u201d Brisco noted. \u201cOnce you go through the assessment and get that data, it allows you to structure it how you need to.\u201d Added McDonald: \u201cWhen we find workflow savings, under a seat program, we\u2019re not giving them all back to the customer. We\u2019re keeping some of that. When we construct a seat-based deal, you can see reductions in revenue of 15-20 percent, but upticks in the total gross profit in the account, anywhere from 6-9 percent. We\u2019re not, as dealers, giving it all back.\u201d Brisco said the ideal candidate for SBB is one that can take advantage of multiple services in instances where the customer is being billed not only for managed print but other offerings that entail different billing methods. \u201cYou have some you\u2019re billing for seat, billing for page, some you\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":24360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80,1650,82,1638],"tags":[2166,3182,303,2970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24359"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24382,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359\/revisions\/24382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}